Agree with most of your analysis. However, one place I take issue with is your claim that "the weird conspiracy theory thrown out about how attempts at more egalitarian college admissions are simply a backhanded dig at Jews and Asians". Given that we have it on good historical evidence the up and rising Jewish population in elite colleges in early 20th century made Caucasians in those institutions feel threatened, which caused them to change applications to add extra-curriculars as a metric, which was the mechanism to decrease the number of Jewish students admitted---given it's played out this way before where a rising racial minority group has been discriminated against in favour of White applicants, surely you cannot blame people for suspecting the admission process is again being made (a) less meritocratic, (b) decreasing number of Asian and Jewish admissions, and (c) increasing White admissions all in the name of racial equity?